"Suppose you're thinking about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly someone will say 'plate' or 'shrimp' or 'plate of shrimp,' out of the blue. No explanation and there's no point in looking for one either. It's all part of the cosmic unconsciousness."
Tracey Walter as "Miller" in "Repo Man"

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

What Hillary is Doing

I will tell you.

She's fighting to win.

Hitting below the belt? Playing the race card? Alienating her base? Spoiling all the advances ever made in the entire history of feminism? Employing Rovian smear tactics? Destroying the American family? Embarrassing her momma?

Who cares.

I actually heard an Air America liberal talk-show host who has a national following tell her listeners to write in "Obama" rather than vote for Hillary if she is the one on the Democratic ticket come November.

Wouldn't that just be giving the election to McSame?

Hillary and Obama are not friends. They are politicians. If politics requires them to come together, then they will, even after shivving one another in the primaries. The important thing is that neoconservatism is a gross failure and a Democratic president must take the helm in January 2009. Is that really so difficult to understand?

5 comments:

Well-put. You are just about the only liberal blogger that I've read that is saying this. I think there has a been a disproportionate amount of slamming of Hillary for rough-and-tumble politics. If people decide they support Obama because he has better policies or because they think he will be a better president or even if they feel he's more electable ... fine. But don't lose sight of what we are shooting for here. Clinton and Obama's policies are fairly similar and either one of them would be several orders of magnitude better as a president than McCain.

Absolutely. I can't denigrate her for doing what she needs to do to maximize her opportunity.

Without taking anything away from the dedicated followers of each, I just think that most average Democrats would be happy with either candidate. I understand the sense of struggle as each tries to make it to the top, but I think the Democratic party is not headed for such a showdown as is predicted; when the choice gets made, I think ranks will close rather quickly.

I wrote about why I'd support her if she is the nominee here (last October)and also here (in January).

That said, I really believe that we can do so much better. Hillary, whether she is gun shy since the health care thing or because she really is that conservative, seems too timid to stand up and be a real liberal. Obama does not have such qualms.

Let's remember that we have a whole new generation of voters who are too young to have been taken in by the silver tongued poison of Ronald Reagan. We have to quit acting like (or perhaps I should say, electing leaders who act like) we are afraid of the dreaded 'L' word and will do anything, even vote like a Republican, to avoid it. We won't-- they can paint any Democrat as a Liberal-- and we shouldn't. The past quarter century of conservative domination of discourse (with even Democrats arguing about how well they can cut government, cut taxes and deregulate) has proven an unmitigated failure, which has left this country deep in debt, with people struggling to stay afloat and for the first time in our history pessimistic that their children will have a better life than they did. In contrast, the era of Liberal dominance of the discourse (in which even Republicans like Eisenhower talked about how to make things better for ordinary people), roughly from 1932-1980 despite the 'mslaise' of the Carter years that helped conservatives take over the lexicon, was a period of unparalleled economic and social advancement in the history of the United States.

I believe it is time for the clock to come back around again, and the unnatural philosophy of conservatism (in which wealth is aggressively transferred to the already wealthy) to be swept aside.

Obama can do that much better than Hillary, but given the alternative it is indeed true that we must unite at the end of the day.